Managing Regional Web Shipping Methods in NetSuite

Many NetSuite customers ship to a variety of different regions and countries that require different shipping policies. The tools in NetSuite to manage these are quite limited but can do extraordinary things. This is the first in a series of posts about managing shipping methods for NetSuite ecommerce stores. The focus today is regionalizion.

Here is the most common scenario: You want to offer one set of shipping methods in the mainland US. You need another set for Canada to reflect increased costs and manage customer expectations crossing the border. A third set for far flung places such as Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. And a fourth set for the rest of the world. A more complex version of this divides the US up into zones by state.

In release 2009.2, NetSuite introduced the ability to restrict a shipping method by country. So you can have one set for Canada and another for the US and a third for the rest of the world. To do this go to the shipping item (Lists>Accounting>Shipping Items in Admin or Full Access) and edit the Shipping and Handling Rules to either include or exclude the desired countries. This is OK as far as it goes, but you can still end up shipping ground to Hawaii.

To take this to the next level, you need to add some smarts to your checkout. To do this, you need to create an index of your shipping methods and an index of shipping zones by state, province or territory. A script is then used to detect which state the customer is shipping to and only show the correct methods. If the user has not selected an appropriate method, the script will not allow the order to submit and will display an error.

The script must also detect when there is no pre-calculate applicable method (eg shipping a piano to Australia) and present a default RFQ method advising the customer that the shipping needs to be quoted and their credit card will not be charged until they approve the quote.

If desired, you can have multiple zone matrixes driven by additional factors (eg - if an item on the order needs to go by freight, or a method only applies if you are paying by credit card)

Examples of sites in which I have done this include WoodlandDirect and NovaNaturalToys

Next up: Rush orders, upcharges, location-specific quantities and all sorts of other funky things you can do with or to a NetSuite checkout.